Tim Burga, Ohio AFL-CIO President: Emailing a Spamtrap?

The president of the Ohio chapter of the AFL-CIO, the largest trade union in the United States, is sending “get out the vote” emails to an email address that closed before the last presidential election. Either the AFL-CIO ignored bounces from early 2008 through late 2009, is sending email to a list that has not been contacted since that period, or has purchased a list. The ESP was Salsalabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change.

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Julia Ager, Salsa Labs: A Spamtrap “Expressed Interest”?

SalsaLabs, the ESP side of liberal U.S. political activist group Wired for Change, is mailing an email address that has not been live for many years (since before the 2008 presidential election), thanking it for expressing interest in Salsalabs’ services (like, *when*?) and asking for the person behind it to watch a demonstration. It appears that SalsaLabs ignored bounces to email to their own list and continues to send email for years despite not having received any responses. This is really lame, Salsalabs. A professional ESP should know better than to keep pounding email addresses that don’t respond!

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Nancy Pelosi: Urging a Spamtrap to Donate to the Democratic Party

U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, emailing via the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), is urging an email address that has not been live since before the previous presidential election to donate to the Democratic Party. The DCCC is sending a *lot* of spam to a number of spamtrap email addresses of mine, so much that I’m surprised they haven’t been listed by a major blacklist yet. The ESP is Blue State Digital.

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Grassfire Nation: Emailing a Long-Closed Email Address

Grassfire Nation, a U.S.-based conservative political action group, is sending bulk email to an email address that has been closed for many years. That email address rejected all email at SMTP time for at least twelve consecutive months before being re-enabled as a spamtrap. Grassfire mails from its own IPs; no ESP appears to have been involved.

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Front Porch Politics: Emailing A *VERY* Old Closed Email Address

Front Porch Politics, a web portal for people who support conservative political causes in the U.S., is sending bulk emails to an email address that has not been live for several years, via conservative activist marketer and ESP ResponseBeacon.

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Faithful America: Mailing a Long-Closed Email Address

Faithful America, an organization of religious people who support progressive causes, is spamming an email address that was turned into a spamtrap about a year ago after rejecting email at SMTP time for over eighteen months. Their ESP is SalsaLabs, aka Wired for Change.

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DCCC: Mailing Long-Closed Email Addresses

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), an organization affiliated with the U.S. Democratic political party, is spamming email addresses that have been closed for years, and in the interim bounced email at SMTP time with a 500-level rejection for over twelve consecutive months. In other words, these email addresses are spamtraps. If the DCCC continues to send bulk email to them in the quantities that I am seeing, they are likely to end up in trouble with anti-spam blacklists.

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Political Spam on the MainSleaze Blog

Before Charles blogged about the spam he had received from Herman Cain’s campaign this morning, he emailed me and asked if political spam qualified for mention on the blog. The answer was “yes”, qualified only by the requirement that the spam be from the sender’s own IPs or sent via a legitimate ESP. On thinking about this, I realized that a public policy statement might be in order.

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Spam Promoting Herman Cain

Today I received spam promoting the candidacy of US presidential candidate Herman Cain. I have no idea how I came to be on their email list. I don’t subscribe to political mailings and I’m very careful to try to avoid giving any personal information to companies or organizations that I think might sell my address to anyone else, getting me even more unwanted mail.

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